It's official. Thanks in part to the tens of thousands of us who signed petitions, called and wrote our Senators Gina McCarthy is the new head of the EPA after surviving a more than 150-day filibuster.
McCarthy was one of several executive branch appointees have been held up by a series of stalling tactics for the last few months. This is unusual in the history of the Senate, which has a job to 'advise and consent' on certain presidential nominees, but is not actually empowered to
choose agency directors or cabinet officials. Presidents, who need to be elected every 4 years, not every 6 like a Senator, get to make the call about who should serve in key posts in their branch of government - the senate just gets a veto to make sure they aren't appointing people who are wildly unqualified.
That certainly wasn't true of McCarthy - who worked for Mitt Romney while he was Governor of Massachusetts and at the EPA as a key official in charge of air pollution during Obama's first term. But Republicans (in particular) and pro-pollution Senators (in general) pitched a fit over McCarthy's nomination -- Boycotting her confirmation hearings and demanding answers to a preposterous 1,000+ questions (more than they have asked past secretaries of Defense or State, for example).
Why all the Sturm und Drang? Simple: McCarthy is a stone cold coal-powered-pollution killer. And that is some seriously good news for the planet and all of us who live on it.
When I started as an environmental organizer almost 20 years ago, fighting to clean up or close down coal fired power plants was one of my first jobs. But it was a grueling job because coal is an old, familiar fuel. Like oil it's made a lot of fossil fuel barons very rich. And they've used that money to consistently stamp out opposition, run roughshod over the rights of local communities and workers around the country -- So powerful was the coal industry that they got the nickname "King Coal" - because they ruled our energy economy with the impunity of a monarch.
And nothing ever threatened the rule of King Coal as much as rules to regulate global warming pollution from power plants. The idea was so threatening to the coal industry and their puppets in the Senate that Senator Joe Manchin once famously shot a law to regulate global warming in a campaign commercial as a chilling demonstration of how 'dead' climate campaigners were to him and his campaign.
Despite that powerful opposition, during Obama's first term Gina McCarthy presided over the drafting of a new set of rules to regulate power plant pollution from new power plants. As crazy as is sounds we've actually never had such a rule. For as long as there have been power plants in this country, it's been perfectly legal for them to treat our atmosphere like an open sewer - dumping as much global warming pollution as they want into it with no fee, penalty, or consequence. It used to be like that for soot, mercury and acid rain too - which is why Environmental Action members helped organize the first earth day rallies and pass the Clean Air Act.
But McCarthy's plan to apply the same logic to climate change that we do to other environmental issues was more controversial than the Clean Air Act (which was passed unanimously thorough the Senate in 1970). King Coal sued the EPA to stop the plan from going into effect and the case went all the way to the Supreme court, which ruled that, yes, the EPA does have the ability to regulate pollution, and YES global warming pollution is really pollution.
That in and of itself was enough to make me a fan of McCarthy, and to frighten court of King Coal into waging war on McCarthy and the EPA. Senator Inhofe and other Congressional climate deniers have repeatedly said that they oppose McCarthy simply because she has a track record of regulating global warming pollution.
Last month, President Obama did a courageous thing and upped the ante on this important fight for the future of America's electricity supply. Speaking at Georgetown University on a sweltering summer day, Obama ordered the EPA (again, an agency he, not the Congress, directs) to enact the same type of rules for all power plants. Just think about this: With McCarthy's nomination still stalled in the Senate over the specific issue that she was too tough on King Coal, the President had gave her specific orders to effectively end the era of coal fired electricity in this country. Because there's simply no way to burn coal without generating an enormous amount of pollution, including about a third of the total carbon emissions in this country.
By giving that order, Obama was telling the US senate that he would not back down, no matter how many stupid questions they asked. He and his EPA are going to fight global warming like it matters.
And that is a really big deal. Because as previously noted, the Senate is not going to stop filibustering climate legislation anytime soon. A small cadre of climate deniers, tinfoil hat-wearers and general whack jobs will continue to dominate and obstruct the conversation in our legislative branch. And that means we're going to need McCarthy and Obama to keep stepping up.
McCarthy can start by following through on the President's' proposal to regulate global warming pollution from power plants. But she can't stop there. As the person appointed and now confirmed to the job of protecting our nation's environment, we need her to also step up and tell the president that YES the tar sands are a climate killer, and therefore he needs to JUST SAY NO to the Keystone XL oil pipeline. And we'll need her help to rein in the rest of the President's disastrous "all of the above" energy plan - from a ban on fracking, to a rollback of arctic drilling and an end to exports of coal and natural gas. Because what's the point of passing rules to stop the stuff being burned here if we just ship it to China to be burned there?
It's going to be a long road to climate security. Many of our friends are out walking it right now. But together, I believe we've helped bring a new ally into this fight. Thanks for always taking action for the Environment.
Drew Hudson
Director | Environmental Action